Blog For Choice

Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and all around the blogosphere, folks are taking a moment to write about the importance of a woman’s right to choose.

You can read what Doc had to say, or Elishevah, or Toni, just a few of the bloggers who turned up with this button on my Google Reader today.

I was much more vocal on this topic when I was in college, but being a stay-at-home mom in the comfortable semi-suburbs leaves me with less opportunities to discuss heady philosophical issues, and more opportunities to discuss the everyday issues.  (Seriously.  I couldn’t make this up.  As I was typing the last sentence, my husband wandered into the office and asked, “Is the peanut butter in here?  Because I can’t find it in the kitchen.” Those are my issues now.)

But before I sign off to track down the peanut butter, I will say: IT IS A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE.  Choosing to have an abortion is not an easy decision, and I don’t think any woman could make it lightly.  Whatever the outcome, a pregnancy, planned or unplanned, will forever change that woman’s life.  A baby.  A baby given to another to raise.  An abortion.  A miscarriage.  None of those are things a woman can ever leave behind; those events help shape who we are, and what our life becomes.  It’s not the place of the government or any outside group to choose for me, or for you, or for the women down the street what our life becomes.

Book Basket - Africa

It occurred to me that although I’ve been changing the books in my Book Basket (my librarything widget in the sidebar), by not posting about it, I’m not creating any permanent record for myself of what books we were perusing when. So I’m going to try to post about the book basket more often, to jog my own memory later.

This week, we chose a pile of books from our Africa cubby. (Back in March I also made a post of our books from and about Africa that you can read here.) Upstairs in The Nursery, we have two bookshelves that each have 9 square cubbyholes.

They are roughly sorted - some better than others! We have a Knights, Castles & Robin Hood cubby, an Africa cubby, a Trains & Trucks cubby, a Songs & Music cubby, a Seasonal cubby, one devoted to Arthur, Franklin & Froggy, two for Dr. Seuss, one for all the best Bedtime Books, one that has big Anthologies, etc. This makes the books easier to find and easier to put away, and when the mood strikes me to read a certain kind of book, it’s easier to grab a whole bunch of them at once.

I pulled twelve books for this week’s book basket:

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain, Galimoto, I Am Simon, Jambo Means Hello, A Life Like Mine, Madiba Magic, Moja Means One, My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, And Me, Riddle By The River, Traveling to Tondo, We All Went On Safari, and Why Mosquitoes Buzz In People’s Ears.

Two of these (I Am Simon and Madiba Magic) my Dad brought to us from South Africa. The others have all been picked up here or there (mostly at the AAUW Used Book Sale) over the years, so you should be able to find them fairly easily here in the US.

JediBoy’s favorites so far this week are Madiba Magic, which is a collection of Nelson Mandela’s favorite folk tales, and Galimoto, which is the story of a boy who collects enough wire to build a galimoto, a push car. The book of folk tales is a favorite because he likes the style of storytelling, and the book Galimoto is a favorite because he owns his own, brought-back-from-South-Africa because-all-the-kids-there-have-one, blue galimoto safari truck.